In 2018, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival celebrates its 15th year as Southeast Asia’s leading festival of words and ideas, so naturally there’ll be a flurry of special festivities to mark the milestone. The celebrations start with the Early Bird tickets, which fly on Monday 16 July, alongside the first announcement of Indonesian and international speakers appearing at this year’s Festival. In this weekly blog series, we’ll share six reasons we think you should be part of the action by purchasing an Early Bird 4-Day Festival Pass.
Reason 3: Get to know our Early Bird speakers intimately
For literature lovers who are fervent festival-goers, preparing for a writers fest is an essential part of the experience. Devouring as many works as possible by Festival speakers in the lead up to the event is something many of our attendees commit to with zeal, and this year we’re making the process easier.
When you purchase an Early Bird ticket we’ll add you to the UWRF enews, which we send monthly and then with greater frequency as we approach Festival time.* In a Festival first, from 16 July we’ll send a special weekly Early Bird speaker series, with enticing info about our first lineup of 16 speakers. Our Media Team are already busy gathering our recommended reading lists, articles and interviews to help you get to know our Early Bird speakers intimately.
If you’re wondering how we select our first lineup of 16 speakers, the list does not only contain some of our leading names, but also writers upon whom we wish to shine the spotlight; writers whose work you may not have encountered yet, but who could well turn out to be your Festival favorite. Some of our previous Early Bird speakers include Madeleine Thien, Oka Rusmini, Hanya Yanagihara, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Amanda Lee Koe, and Eka Kurniawan. This audience feedback about preparing for the Festival sums it all up for us:
*Please feel free to unsubscribe if you’d prefer not to receive our enews, or if you’d like to sign up now you can do so on our homepage.